Monthly Archives: March 2012

At SXSW I was shown and invited to support* the US Olympic Genome Project, created by Samsung. I don’t take on support of brands randomly – I think this is a fun effort. (And before you worry, no one is trying to attempt to graft genes into me to make me a better athlete – though, if you have an idea – call me.)

Samsung wants to get people thinking about the upcoming Olympics, and more than just the highest profile athletes. I’ve met many Olympic athletes due to my work via the Harbrooke Group for the New York Road Runners, some high profile (like Apolo Ono) and some who are not household names.

Without exception, these people are exceptional. They work hard and are committed to a goal with singular purpose. They’ve generally been polite, intelligent and unassuming. This follows with a story that one of the Samsung folks told me – that they had 2 ex-Olympians working in their office in NJ, and no one even knew they had been in Equestrian or Pentathalon events.

It made the team think about all the Olympians and Para-Olympians living among us who we don’t know, and don’t understand how we might have connections to them. At SXSW I saw a sneak preview of the US Olympic Genome project, which will enable you you to find, via your Facebook connections, listed place of residence and birth, and your interests, how you’re connected to various athletes.Â This is pretty creative marketing and it taps into an opportunity for all of us to learn more about theÂ athletes and para-athletesÂ in our midst, whether in well-known sports or lesser-known ones.

While this project is a closed beta, I was able to see some of the Olympic quizzes, games and data visualizations that will let everyone see their connections toÂ athletesÂ and sports they weren’t aware of. Taking the quizzes and doing games earns you points, and you can use those points to donate money to Team USA via the non-profit USOC, which pays for athletes to train and go to the Olympics.

Glad I can be a part of the soon-to-be-everywhere Olympic spirit in 2012, and kudos to the creative folks who thought this one up.

*Note, this post was created in connectionÂ withÂ my appointment as anÂ AmbassadorÂ for the Samsung US Olympic Genome Project – this is a compensated position.Â

As part of Nokia’s efforts this year at SXSW to raise awareness of the over 4 million acres of land burned in Texas wildfires last year, they’ve started a contest to generate someÂ excitementÂ and re-plant some of those trees.

So, during our time at the Interactive portion of SXSW, we invited 50 of our favorite Twitter friends to help us out in our mission. They will take part in a 48 hour online Twitter challenge using the hashtag #ijustplantedatree. Each time they tweet with that hashtag, 5 trees will be planted locally by our friends at the Arbor Day Foundation. To make sure we keep up the pace, an online leaderboard has been established, and will start to keep track of who is planting the most trees.

There is a sub-contest where the tweeter who plants the most trees gets one of the shiny new Nokia Lumia 900 phones. Great if I win, but I’m not concerned about winning. If you re-tweet me, you’ll also be helping plant trees (not helping me win).

So if you see Tweets regarding “ijustplantedatree” you’ll know what I’m up to.

*Disclosure – it is my option to keep or return the phone – I have not decided yet what I will do. I will update this later.

This is much geekier than my usual stuff (not that I post here much anymore.)Â Unless you’re good with Arduino and XBee this will not be interesting – and possibly seem like gibberish.

We have two Arduino Uno boards. Our board seem to transmit and receive each other, and we’ve tested the xbees – they work fine in an “echo” test we found that transmits from one and sends a signal back to the other. (Unwired).

As you can see in this video, we load up the two sketches (listed below) which we’ve simplified to be – one sketch sends an “A” character – the other, upon receiving any character, lights an LED. Very simple.

But even though the receiving board seems to be getting a signal from the transmitting board once a second, it does not trigger the rest of the sketch’s loop to run. If we wire the boards together without the xbees, the sketch runs. We are stumped.